My Work Laptop Broke — Here’s How I Avoided Losing Everything

Originally written in 2025. Content may vary slightly across newer versions.

A few weeks ago, something unexpected happened at work: my laptop stopped working properly, and IT told me the only option was to reinstall the system.

I use a Lenovo P1 running Windows 10 at work. In our company setup, all software is managed and installed through Software Center. Normally this works fine, but in my case, Software Center stopped working properly. That meant I couldn’t install any new software — which wasn’t an immediate blocker, but it was a problem waiting to happen.

For about two weeks, IT and I tried different ways to fix it. We went through the usual troubleshooting, but nothing worked. Even though the issue didn’t stop me from doing my daily work, I knew I couldn’t just ignore it. Sooner or later I’d need to install something new, and without Software Center, I’d be stuck. I had to deal with it once and for all.

At that point, the only options were to reinstall Windows or switch to a new laptop. Reinstalling would take too long, so I chose the second option: moving to a new machine. And that meant it was time to prepare a proper backup.

What I Decided to Back Up

When you’re about to switch laptops, it’s surprisingly hard to know what exactly you’ll need later. This was my first time really thinking it through, and I didn’t want to miss anything important. I broke it down into a few categories:

1. User files — Things in Desktop and Documents. These are easy to forget but also the simplest to copy.

2. Browser data — Mainly my Chrome bookmarks. I exported them as an .html file so I could import them later.

3. VS Code setup — I backed up the entire User folder, which included themes, fonts, and terminal configs.

4. Dev config — Just the essentials: my .gitconfig and SSH keys.

5. Email folders — In Outlook, I backed up a couple of emails I considered important, and some HR/Admin-related messages.

Restoring on the New System

Once I had the new laptop, I started putting everything back. Desktop and Documents were straightforward — I just copied them over, and everything ended up in the right place.

For Chrome, I opened the bookmarks manager and used Import Bookmarks to bring in the .html file I had exported. Everything was in the right folders, just like on my old laptop.

For VS Code, I first opened it once so that the User folder was created. Then I used the backup of my entire User folder to overwrite the new one. This restored all my settings. For extensions, I manually reinstalled them because of company restrictions.

For development configuration, I copied over .gitconfig and the .ssh folder, then tested my GitHub connection to make sure it worked.

For Outlook, I realized the backup wasn’t necessary — once I logged in, all my emails were already there.

Some of my project folders were large, so copying them took a few hours. In hindsight, since all the projects were already pushed to GitHub, I could have just cloned the repositories and set up the local environment, which would have been faster.

After finishing all of this, I checked over everything and realized the new laptop felt just like the old one. The whole restoration process was smoother and quicker than I had expected.

Lesson Learned

The main lesson I took away from this experience is that a little preparation goes a long way. Making sure I had all the core files backed up — like my user files, VS Code settings, and development configs — made the process smooth and predictable. Other things, like emails or project files that were already synced to the cloud, didn’t actually need to be backed up.

At first, I was worried about potentially losing something important and how that might affect my work. But once I went through the process, I realized that as long as I prepared properly, everything went smoothly. What initially felt like a stressful, high-stakes task turned into a manageable and controlled process.